Mathieu Duchâtel is Director of the Asia Program at Institut Montaigne. . He lived for ten years between Shanghai, Taipei and Beijing. It has just published a note titled "[Scenarios] – China's Taiwan Policy to 2028."
LE FIGARO. - Should Lai Ching-Te's victory in the presidential election in Taiwan be seen as a setback for China?
Mathieu DUCHÂTEL. - Yes, this is another setback for China. Overall, his attempts to persuade the Taiwanese electorate that this election was a choice between war and peace failed. She had hoped for a Kuomintang victory, but the Kuomintang lost again – by 850,000 fewer votes than in 2020.
On the contrary, for the first time since 1996, when Taiwan held its first direct presidential election, an executive party has been held to hold on for a third term. But this is a setback mitigated by the fact that the Democratic Progressive Party, his party, will no longer have a parliamentary majority in the Legislative Yuan. It had 57 seats, and it won only 51. In addition, Lai Ching-te lost 2.5 million votes in the presidential election compared to 2020. Its 40% of voters constitute the structural electoral base – the PDP loyalists, but it loses the centre. This result explains the very modest posture of the new Taiwanese president in his victory speech.
The Taiwanese people today categorically reject unification.
Mathieu Duchâtel
China can hope that the Legislative Yuan, Taiwan's parliament, will neutralize President Lai's agenda. Wouldn't four years of confrontation between the executive and legislative branches of power tire the Taiwanese population? Wouldn't they damage the reputation for good governance forged under President Tsai Ing-wen? Such an outcome is not at all certain. History has shown that the executive can govern without a parliamentary majority. But this is the bet China can make, in order to seek to delegitimize the ruling party and beyond, Taiwan's democratic system.
Are there any other lessons to be learned from the election?
The emergence of a third force, around Ko Wen-je and the TPP. It captures a young electorate, which wants to break free from the traditional divide on relations with China. With 8 MPs out of 113, it will be decisive in Parliament. Today, however, it has few clear proposals for public policy. The lack of clarity in the TPP's line makes the relationship between the executive and legislative branches the great unknown of the next four years. It is expected to cooperate with the executive branch on some issues, and to oppose it by working with the Kuomintang on others, but it is not possible to identify which ones at this stage.
Is the option of peaceful reunification diminished? According to you, a gradation in coercion is more likely than the outbreak of a war of absorption...
This option was not on the table before the election. And after the vote, Lai Ching-te's democratic mandate is one to defend the status quo. The Taiwanese population now categorically rejects unification – a political negotiation between the two sides on the status of Taiwan is not on the agenda, especially since China will probably refuse to establish a channel of communication with the Taiwanese executive, preferring to bypass it.
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Conversely, while China suspects him of being ideologically pro-independence, it is important to point out that this is not his mandate at all – he won the victory by promising continuity with the very moderate and cautious policies of Tsai Ing-wen, of whom he was vice-president.
Coercion is now more likely than war because war is too risky and costly as long as the U.S. deterrence posture remains credible — and it is with the Biden administration.
Mathieu Duchâtel
How will China's Taiwan policy evolve? More coercion seems inevitable. China will not abandon its policy of economic incentives and its search for influence relays in Taiwan, but the center of gravity of its Taiwanese policy has shifted with Xi Jinping to the side of coercion. This is the almost automatic result of its loss of attractiveness, especially economic. What are the economic incentives as Taiwan's foreign trade diversification is underway? That ASEAN overtook China for the first time in 2023 as the top destination for Taiwanese direct investment? The economic relationship between the two shores remains very dense and structuring, but the political dynamic is towards diversification.
Coercion is now more likely than war because war is too risky and costly as long as the U.S. deterrence posture remains credible — and it is with the Biden administration. In addition, China has coercive cards to play. An intensification of the war by law, incursions into Taiwanese territorial waters (which it respects de facto, without of course acknowledging their existence) are two scenarios to be considered very seriously. They are all the more credible because China could rely on the self-neutralization of foreign actors. How do we respond to such actions if they are legitimized as "policing" within "one China"? Our one-China policies create ambiguity. On the one hand, Beijing may anticipate that they will prevent a coherent response. On the other hand, Beijing may fear that coercive actions could result in some states reinterpreting their one-China policy in a way that is more favorable to Taiwan.
The cultural, linguistic and human attachment to China is far from having disappeared in Taiwan, but the decline in identification with China is strong and undeniable.
Mathieu Duchâtel
For Europeans, it will be important not to overinterpret the scope and risks of China's future coercive actions, so as not to amplify their intended effects.
Only 2.5 percent of residents say they are 'Chinese' today, down from a quarter in 1995, while 62 percent now identify as Taiwanese," according to a poll by National Chengchi University in Taipei. Is there a generational shift in Taiwan between an elderly electorate attached to the former Middle Kingdom and a youth asserting its insular identity?
The generational divide is not the most structuring. Taiwan's oldest supporters of independence are the strongest supporters of independence, as it is this population that holds the memory of martial law (lifted in 1987) and the Kuomintang White Terror.
Younger generations are often referred to as "naturally pro-independence", without even being politicised – Taiwanese life is their daily national horizon. The Ko vote is also a vote that can be interpreted in part as young people seeking to get out of the identity problem, to talk about their daily lives.
The cultural, linguistic and human attachment to China is far from having disappeared in Taiwan, but the decline in identification with China is strong and undeniable. There are two opposing interpretations. In Beijing, it is seen as the result of de-inicination policies, particularly in national education – and it is therefore believed that this state of affairs can be reversed through re-education. In Taiwan, democratization is often seen as unleashing social forces that were stifled by Japanese colonization from 1895 to 1945 and then by the authoritarian regime imposed by the Kuomintang after Japan's surrender. These two visions are irreconcilable, which is, of course, the crux of the matter.